“It feels like chaos,” said Iñigo, a doctor at a hospital in northern Spain.
He said there was no electricity at noon on Monday, the building’s emergency generators were reserved for critical areas, unable to access patient data due to no telephone signals or emails, communication broke down, and colleagues were unable to perform some of their responsibilities.
Iño said the hospital’s backup generator should ensure that the surgery continues, but was forced to cancel the surgery due to downgrading the lift and the inability to move patients safely. “It made me realize that we are so dependent on electronics,” he added.
Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France suffered the worst power outages in recent European history on Monday, with approximately 55 million people falling into pre-electronic age. Mobile signals were interrupted, traffic lights stopped working, supermarkets turned black and resorted to cash as digital payment systems stagnated, people stayed away from home as power outages extended.
EU residents were urged to store essentials worth 72 hours last month, but the power outages seemed to reveal that many were vulnerable to widespread destruction.
After the power outage, as the service returned to normal levels, the guardians spoke to the people they got in touch as they reflected on lessons learned from the events in terms of preparation and resilience.
For Iño, even though the hospital armistice at the time felt like “a total disaster”, he was grateful that no one was physically hurt. “The best thing we can do [in future] There are more backup generators and fuel to make things go as smoothly as possible. ” he said.
In Barcelona, Beibei, 41, initially found a “very exciting” interruption. Only when her neighbor and four-month-old baby knocked on the door, she said, “You know it’s in Europe,” she began to worry. “I saw my fear in her face,” she said.
She wanted to pick up her six-year-old son from school, but needed to buy food first. “In almost complete darkness, the shop owner has moved cashless customers,” said Beibei, a climate campaigner who has lived in Spain since the co-pandemic. She picked up some essentials, but seeing other customers filling up with food with a cart, she began to worry that she didn’t have enough.
Beibei went out with her neighbor for the second time. Their recent supermarket has stopped getting new customers to come. Another supermarket that Beibei is trying to be its last energy reserve: “When the cashier takes things out of my basket, I realize I don’t have enough cash. That’s when the last little bit of electricity was fully invested, she said, “Now you take nothing.”
After collecting her son and reuniting with her family, Bebe said she would no longer take things for granted. She added: “I’ve got the cash, so I’m ready next time.”
“This is my opinion on what is important in life. Every bit of food, the presence of people around us, the convenience of cooking and washing with appliances, is a miracle that I will never ignore again.”
Related: Power outages in Spain and Portugal: What causes it, and is there a cyber attack?
The disruption also left people trapped in underground subway tunnels and trains, with many forced to walk along the track or stay for hours.
Doug Craib, 60, of Brighton, boarded Madrid at 9.57 a.m. to Barcelona train and visited a friend on Monday. But before arriving, the train stopped. He said there was no moving signal and the door was still sealed for about two hours until authorities arrived, opening the door and emitting bottled drinks.
He said a woman suffered a panic attack for about six hours. “The air on the carriage is high and hot,” he said. As night fell, police eventually escorted passengers to the train, then walked onto a bus with bags and took them to Barcelona and arrived around midnight, he said.
The experience has stirred many people after they were unable to buy food or water, reevaluated the trend of digital-only transactions.
“Literally, every conversation I had with hotels, taxis and restaurants in Barcelona was concerned about the current trend of cash trends,” he said. “All payment systems are here and the only way you can trade is to trade with cash, but most people don’t, and ATMs are down.”
Catarina, a 24-year-old engineer in Porto, was in her office when the power failed. She went home and filled it on the water in case the pump stopped transporting it to her third floor apartment. She listened to an update on the ventilation station she bought last month after the EU urged people to take urgent precautions.
“No one knows how to do it, where to go, how long it will take,” she said.
“On the other hand, there is a lot of discussion about how humans are lost by technology, but if anything was shown to us yesterday, it's not. When necessary, people come together, get out and act like a community again.”
Catarina was walking with her boyfriend on Monday at 5pm and what she saw made her feel hopeful. She saw cars stop for pedestrians without traffic lights, the buses’ large and orderly routes, a garden full of people reading, playing sports, making barbecues with family, friends and neighbors, residents, talking to passers-by from their doorstep.
“It's amazing,” she said. “Even though everything went wrong, it gave me a lot of hope to see how fast people get together and help each other.”
